Dr. Ava's Guide to Sensual BDSM for Couples

Former actress Ava Cadell has found herself a fine career in the sexologist field, and though this Zero Tolerance label release is clearly aimed at a prurient audience (to compete with Nina Hartley's long-running A & E series) it is actually quite serious. Four porn stars (uncredited: Jenna J. Ross, Cameron Dee, Derrick Pierce & Tony DeSergio) demonstrate the finer points of BDSM lite in stilted scenes (courtesy "women's director" cameraman Quasarman) to illustrate what the good doc Ava tells us in her voice-over.

And I learned a lot listening to her narration. Fetish porn is riddled with scenes featuring odd objects and paraphernalia, and Ava cleared up their names and what they're supposed to be used for. The little metal stirrup type device that runs across some sub's skin is called a "Wurtzenberg Wheel" (spelling?) or merely pinwheel, while the weird little light device that seems to be giving off mild electric shocks is called a "violet wand". For these invaluable revelations, thank you Doc!

The two hours 10 minutes of content is mild stuff indeed, with doms clearly pulling their punches and subs for a day digging what ever morsel of pain (or as Tony likes to call it "sensation") is doled out to them. Nothing resembling the outre stuff one sees in XXX fetish videos is demonstrated here, just some mild spanking, restraint, blindfolding, etc.

The only thing I disliked about this was the disingenuous nature of the interviews and some of the demo-performances. Espeially Tony is extremely phony in his remarks, smug and making it up as he goes along. In his case it is really contradictory with his own paper trail -just watch some of the classic early Tanya Hyde videos for Harmony Films or Private in which Tony gets pegged and does all manner of BDSM nonsense, while professing to be rather virginal in this project.